When my friend Eve Schaub started her Year of No Sugar blog, documenting her quest to keep her entire family sugar free, including two daughters close to the same age as mine, my first reaction was to feel threatened. When threatened, I look for something to criticize, something to make me feel better about myself.

“How could any mother deprive her children of sugar,” I thought. “Sugar is harmless. It’s fun. Kids love it. Heck, I love it. I grew up on it and I’m fine. Just don’t get between me and my Twizzlers.”

But, with each blog post I read, I became more aware that maybe there was more to my “love” of sugar than it just being a sweet, old familiar friend. Maybe I needed sugar. Maybe, possibly, I was dependent on sugar. And was it true the average person consumes 3 pounds of sugar each week? That’s a lot. That’s kind of gross.

While I wrestled with my denial, Eve’s blog became a book , a memoir that’s already getting lots of attention from all sorts of influential people, including Dr. Oz. Eve was kind enough to provide BabyCenter an excerpt from her book, which hits the shelves Tuesday, April 8th.

Sugar Sugar Everywhere

Excerpted from Year of No Sugar, by Eve O. Schaub, published by Sourcebooks

A few months before, in the fall, Steve and I had broken the news to the kids. Our girls, Greta, who was ten then, and Ilsa, who was five, were in the backseat of the car as we drove home from a visit to my mother’s. Having thought of the idea the previous spring, I had been chomping at the bit for months on end, eager to begin, but I had no interest in doing it alone–the whole point to my idea being that the entire family participate. Sure one person can do any ol’ crazy thing–eat snails, live in a Redwood tree, go over Niagara Falls in a corset and heels– but a wholefamily? That meant something much greater, would say so much more–that was the idea which had me lying awake at night wondering: Could we?

But so far Steve had advocated putting it off, wanting to make sure we were really ready–I saw his point. We didn’t want to plunge in too fast, right? But the paranoiac in me wondered: Was he stalling? Was he waiting for me to gradually lose steam, hoping I’d eventually forget about it?

If I pushed too hard, I risked losing his support for the idea, which was pivotal for getting the girls on board. Steve and I finally agreed: It would be January first to January first, beginning to end; it would be our Year of No Sugar.

“We’re thinking of doing a special project–as a family,” I said, in my best overly calm, your- parents- are- totally- sane voice. “We are thinking of not eating sugar. For a while.

It took them about six seconds to ascertain that “no sugar” meant no cupcakes, no pie, no Christmas cookies, no popsicles, no hot cocoa, no maple syrup, no jellybeans, no candy bars, no juice boxes, and no marshmallows. and it took them about three additional seconds to elicit that “a while” meant “a year” in parent-speak, which meant “forever” in kid-speak. And they promptly burst into hysterical tears.

“Well, that went well,” Steve said.

In my mind, keeping it simple was the key to making our Year or No Sugar a success, both in helping us stick to it and in communicating it to others. It didn’t take long for Steve and I to lay down the few ground rules that would govern the year. We would, however, spend the rest of the year fine-tuning the details, as we came upon new information and new, unusual ingredients.

The concept was simple: We were not eating added sugar. If an item contained sugar as an ingredient, no matter how miniscule the amount, we would not eat it–this avoided any slippery-slope concerns. What did we mean by added sugar? Naturally occurring sugar–such as that contained in a piece of fruit, was fine.

But in the interest of family harmony and not being the subject of a future exposé on what subhumanly crappy parents we were , we would have some exceptions too, number one being :as a family, we would pick one dessert per month to have which contained sugar.

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It bugs me so much when family act like I am depriving my daughter or that she “wants” sugar. (She is 1.5 years old). Other than a little honey in yogurt or honey in a homemade muffin she gets no added sugar in her regular diet. We don’t either (save for my coffee of the morning, haven’t been able to give that up)! I do enjoy baking so maybe once a month we’ll have a treat with sugar. We also enjoy eating out, in which case we are probably getting some added sugar but based on what we typically order it wouldn’t be much.

This has all resulted in less sugar cravings for me and my kid is the one that may just take a bite of a cupcake at a birthday party and be fine with it. We love food and eat well, I don’t feel like we miss out not having it as part of a regular diet.

http://expatcatlife.blogspot.com Jules

Couldn’t do it. I like my nightly square of 85% chocolate, and an occasional bag of jelly beans. Given how little sugar we consume already, that seems like a reasonable amount.

Most of the sweet stuff that kidlet gets is in the form of fruit already. Besides his daily dose of prune juice, I don’t even let him have juice most days. His grandmother probably thinks I’m depriving him, but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, between my family history of diabetes and his dad’s family history of rotten teeth, I can live with being evil mommy if it means he escapes both fates.

LeiaSch

Bravo to the family. I would love to read the book. It would be difficult for me (I love Coca-Cola and chocolate), but not for my 20-month old.

Cara

No no nooooo, I love chocolates! So in a nut shell what are the positive impact of the no sugar for a year? Do they intend to return to sugar after one year?

http://thekoolchicken.wordpress.com koolchicken

Of all the crazy things people do diet wise this seems pretty tame. It basically seems like they gave up packaged foods. Since we’re not really supposed to eat weird, processed foods I don’t see that as a big deal. In fact it’s probably a good thing.

For me I couldn’t give up sugar, if only because I don’t believe in giving up anything. Everything in moderation I say. If you want a candy bar go ahead, if you want to give your kid juice go ahead, you won’t her complaints from me. I love candy and always keep a small stash. It goes bad half the time, but I like knowing it’s there I guess. It’s probably the only “food” I waste. But we eat a mostly fresh diet so as far as added sugar goes, we probably don’t get much.

Paige

If it’s just no ‘added’ sugar, that doesn’t seem that bad. Why no maple syrup? The maple syrup we buy is just maple syrup with no added sugar. It has a lot of sugar naturally though. It’s easy to buy juice with no added sugar. You can bake with applesauce, pureed sweet potatoes, raisins, etc and not add sugar. I guess if your family eats a lot of junk this could be monumental, but if you already make healthy choices, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Except chocolate.

http://www.processedfreeamerica.org Laura M

I’ve recently started cutting way back on sugar and refined flour myself. I admire the family for doing this…and bravo for writing a book to bring awareness that we need to make a culture change in American. Sugar is addictive and it is causing an increase in many diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes just to name a few.

Taryn

They did NOT go a year without sugar. They had sugar on a regular basis. I read her blog. Each person had 1 thing with sugar they were allowed to have without question, they celebrated birthdays with cake, they allowed their girls to have sugar at parties if 5 or more other people were eating sweets, they ate sugar on vacation etc…. They didn’t go 30 days without sugar.

Tumble

I was hoping this article would delve deeper into the benefits of “no sugar.” and I agree with the commenter that says they are tired of their family acting like you’re doing a bad thing by taking sugar out of the family’s diet rather than like your doing an admirable and difficult thing in the name of health.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOqwkuvuPNs Corey Crawford Jersey

Wow! This blog looks exactly like my old one! It’s on a totally
different subject but it has pretty much the same page
layout and design. Superb choice of colors!

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